The Justice Department’s examination of E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuits against President Trump could prove to be a significant shift in the administration’s campaign of retribution, moving from targeting of public officials to scrutinizing a case brought by an 82-year-old private citizen who has accused him of sexual assault.
What sets Ms. Carroll apart is the profoundly personal nature of her assertions about the president. And unlike other prominent figures facing investigative scrutiny — James B. Comey, Letitia James, Adam B. Schiff, John O. Brennan — Ms. Carroll, an author and columnist, never sought a public role, political power or governmental authority.
The investigation involves donations made by a nonprofit founded by the liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman to pay for Ms. Carroll’s legal bills, according to people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing inquiry.
As part of that inquiry, prosecutors are examining the veracity of her responses to questions about the donation during the civil proceedings over her accusations that Mr. Trump assaulted her decades ago. But Mr. Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic — and not Ms. Carroll — is currently the subject of the criminal inquiry, although that could change, a person with direct knowledge of the situation said.
The U.S. attorney overseeing the matter in the District of Northern Illinois, Andrew S. Boutros, said in a statement Thursday evening that his office “has never opened” a criminal investigation into Ms. Carroll.
On Wednesday, people briefed on the investigation said that Ms. Carroll was a primary target, prompting a backlash in the hours after news of the inquiry broke.
Ms. Carroll and her benefactor are being scrutinized by a department in which naming and shaming, as opposed to securing convictions, is considered a legitimate aim of law enforcement. Since Mr. Trump returned to office, he has not hesitated to single out his purported enemies as potential targets, even before criminal charges are in the offing.
Under the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, the pace of department activity involving Mr. Trump’s rivals has accelerated significantly, alarming not only career prosecutors but even some Trump appointees who have supported previous efforts to prosecute those who prosecuted the president during the Biden administration.
The investigation into Mr. Hoffman’s nonprofit has been overseen by top department officials in Washington, according to people with knowledge of his actions. But Mr. Blanche, who represented the president in one of his appeals of Ms. Carroll’s legal victories, has recused himself.
Ms. Carroll declined to comment through a representative. A representative for Mr. Hoffman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Critics say the investigation proves Mr. Trump’s appointees are bent on executing Mr. Trump’s personal agenda, even if it means abandoning their commitment to the public, particularly the victims of sexual assault.
“Two of the reasons survivors of sexual abuse often don’t come forward are, first, a fear of not being believed, and second, a fear of retaliation,” said Jacqueline Kelly, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who led the unit that investigated civil rights offenses, including sexual abuse and exploitation.
“Putting a survivor in the cross hairs of a federal criminal investigation involving perjury strikes at both of those fears,” added Ms. Kelly, now a partner with Boies Schiller Flexner in New York.
Mr. Trump and his legal team have vehemently contested Ms. Carroll’s allegations and have accused the president’s political enemies of backing her claims in an unsuccessful effort to destroy him.
The president has disputed Ms. Carroll’s claim that he sexually assaulted her at a Manhattan department store in the mid-1990s, has called her a “total wack job” and said the attack could not have happened because she was not his physical “type.”
He has at every turn fought the jury’s verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing her. Immediately after the trial, he again called her a liar. And in 2024, he sued ABC News for defamation after one of its anchors, George Stephanopoulos, incorrectly stated that Mr. Trump had been found liable for raping Ms. Carroll, rather than sexually abusing her. ABC News paid $15 million to settle the lawsuit.
Most of the department’s recent targets have been current or former officials who have investigated, defied, insulted, opposed or otherwise irked Mr. Trump, an inversion of the prosecutorial credo of investigating crimes, not people prejudged as criminals.
Still, like public officials including the special counsel Jack Smith, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis — all of whom have been targeted by the Justice Department — Ms. Carroll chose to bring a case against Mr. Trump. In 2019, she accused Mr. Trump of having raped her decades earlier; he denied it and insulted her, and she sued him for defamation.
Several years later, after New York passed a law allowing adult victims of sexual abuse a chance to sue, she filed another suit against him. She won both cases, which are now on appeal.
Even when pursuing former and current public officials, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department has delved into their private lives. Ms. James was originally charged with crimes related to a house she owns in Norfolk, Va. (The case was thrown out.) The current indictment against Mr. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, centers on seashells he arranged on a Carolina beach, years after he left public service.
It is unclear which specific statements by Ms. Carroll might be under scrutiny by the Justice Department, but Mr. Trump’s lawyers have outright accused her of lying in an October 2022 deposition when she was asked if anyone else was paying her legal fees, and she said no.
The issue arose in April 2023, when Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote to the judge before the first of Ms. Carroll’s trials, accusing her of concealing financial support her case had received from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and a harsh critic of Mr. Trump’s.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that they had just learned of Mr. Hoffman’s role from Ms. Carroll’s attorneys, and that the disclosure raised “significant questions” about her credibility.
Ms. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, responded to the judge, arguing that Mr. Hoffman’s financial support was irrelevant to Ms. Carroll’s legal claims, and that she had nothing to do with obtaining the outside funding. Ms. Kaplan said her client had only just recalled that her lawyers had secured the funding for certain expenses and fees, which Ms. Kaplan promptly disclosed to Mr. Trump’s lawyers.
The judge barred Mr. Trump’s lawyers from introducing such evidence at the 2023 trial, in which a jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation and awarded Ms. Carroll $5 million in damages. The ruling was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. “Ms. Carroll plausibly represented that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding,” a unanimous three-judge panel said.
The appeals panel added no evidence suggested Ms. Carroll was personally involved in securing the funding, interacted with the funder or even knew the funder’s political position.
Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting.
